So, I have only a few more days until my Year Two project ends. Last year's project ended with a whimper--completed, but with some family trauma, blah, blah, blah, and well, a slideshow I was hoping to create never happened. Now I want to do a slideshow.
BUT, a few months ago, my computer started to crash. I was wise and backed up everything on an external drive. I then wiped clean my computer and reloaded back 2014's LR5 catalogue. But I still have stuff on the External drive and it appears, another LR5 catalogue. All of the 2013 photos are on my External drive.
I'm in a pickle because I don't know organizational-wise if I should Add, Copy, or Move things from LR or just move the folders back to the desktop and then Add them in to the existing desktop version of LR (they are separate). OHHHHH, AND I'm noticing that many of my existing 2014 photos in LR do not have the editing "track edits" with them now. I'm feeling secure that the original RAW files are in place, but I would have to start editing all over again unless I find the information to import. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
I'm needing a real LR5 user for advice here. Sorry to be so desperate, but I'm trying to get this video done--it's a rather important thing to me and I don't want to spend time editing lots of photos again. I'm having to tag the year as it is (that was just laziness before) so I can export them all to one file for a big upload.
Hi Daryl,
Do you normally use just one catalogue or several? I have 3 and recently moved the catalogue location to OneDrive and reconnected to these from my desktop and laptop without having to re add copy etc. There are some fab videos on YouTube. Will help where I can :)
I usually manually copy the files and then load the catalog in LR.. but it sounds to me like youre missing the edits in an original catalog? Try checking all your catalogs and see if your edits are there. If so, you're going to need to export the appropriate folders (not the raws, just the edits - its like crtl export... i dont remember unfortunately).
Then load up your new catalog and then import these back in.
What happens if you relaunch the LR5 catalog that is still on you ExHD, and is that perhaps where you were telling LR to save your backups whenever you closed LR, you might find all your editing there?
I'm a tad confuse. How did you do your backup? If you made a copy of it, then when you move ALL the catalog and files back to computer, as long as the path directories are exactly the same, it should work with all your edits. Even if you run the catalog with the raw files being there, it should run but will report problems finding the RAW files. Depending on the depth of your preview files or if you use smart catalog, you may see the thumbnails still.
The catalog file contains all the information about the changes you made. Without it, you just have the original RAW files. If lightroom has trouble finding the original files (I believe a "!" will appear on the corner of the thumbnail), you can relink it to the new location LR is smart enough to check all files within the folder so you don't have to relink every file separately.
BTW: As a tip, you should always save your files (lightroom catalog & raw files) on two different drive. Use export as catalog to make the backup and import catalog to regularly keep them in sync. Copy/pasting outside of lightroom doesn't work very well in many cases.
The idea of using cloud storage is interesting. However, my storage needs are huge. I have close to 1.5 TB of images and videos in multiple lightroom catalogs (I divide catalogs up in years).
Plus with OneDrive, doesn't it just mirror what is on your local drive like Google Drive or Dropbox?
@pixiemac@toast@jo13@june@davidtom
Thanks all! I'll try to answer your questions. I know that there are two LR catalogues because I can launch on on the External and one on the Desktop. I have been trying to figure out how to get them all together, but David, I had not thought of creating separate catalogs on multiple drives (I have several). My hard drive has lots of space (along with the other drives). My backups have been on the same drive as the hard drive, but perhaps I should start doing them as a copy on another drive. Makes sense. When I had to deal with the impending crash, I simply moved everything over to the external drive before I had the crash and them I moved them back. I do think moving the lrcat files back into the catalog or reimport? could be one solution to finding the edits. I'm going to review some more of my Kelby book, although he mainly addresses problems surfacefully. And David, I do not have the ! thankfully, but I do have the ? on the external drive's catalogue (my guess is that it may have been also a different transfer I made to external from my lapto and wiped it clean). The good news is that all my computers are like new again, but the transfer back to what I want on the desktop drive is the process I must understand before I do it. I will update after some more research and small trial processes. Oh, and I don't use cloud storage, and I do not have a subscription to LR with PS. I use everything as the downloaded software. David, I like your second comment, so I'll have to process it in my mind. It's amazing I can even have this conversation after two years starting photography. So many thanks!
Okay.... I'm still somewhat confused about your workflow but here is my suggestion...
So before you rebuilt your computer, it sounds like you copy all your files, including your catalog files, from your internal drive to an external drive via windows explorer or finder (mac). And after the rebuild, you copied them back.
So technically, launching the catalog should work. All the metadata including the edits should still exist in the catalog. LR might be confused about the locations of your RAW files if you didn't use the exact same path and volume name of your internal drive. You would get "?" marks on these folders/files.
If the the catalog on the external drive are the copies you made before you rebuild your computer, it will definitely have "?" because in its database, all the images files were located locally on your internal drive and when it tries to look at the internal drive (using the name of the volume and path), it doesn't see anything (as the files are now all on the external drive).
You could be also receiving the "?" on your directories / files from your LR catalog on your internal drive. The LR catalog records the path of where all your images and it is unforgiving when the actual path differs. In the windows world, it may just need to know that it is the "C drive" and the path (i.e. \Users\darylo'Hare\Pictures\Lightroom\2015\2015-01-15) or in the Apple world, it might look like this "MacintoshHD/Users/darylohare/Pictures/Lightroom/2015/2015-01-15). So the exact path name is required or LR gets confuse and gives you a "?".
This is why exporting/importing catalogs is a better way to move files around as the LR catalog will update the file path.
So if you haven't done the transfer back, you could do this... Launch the copy of the backup catalog on the external drive, right-click on the top-level folder and choose “Find Missing Folder…” and then navigate to the location of your photos on the external hard drive. Once al the "?" marks goes away, you can export the catalog including all images (preview files are optional... you can rebuild them again) to the local drive and you should be good to go.
The above workflow will also allow you to create multiple catalogs if required. If you don't have a lot of images, one catalog may be the easiest to manage. However, if you have a lot of images and/or various projects (i.e. paying jobs vs non_paying jobs), separating them into catalogs might help with the organization. Keywords and collections are a way to do it within LR but as the database gets large, importing catalogs take more time as it has to go through a larger database to find duplicates.
@davidtom Thanks David. I understand why you are confused. My LR 2014 images are all on LR (on desktop harddrive), but as I go through to tag (doing that to get everything done going forward), I see that the edits (most of them are all gone!). It's problematic for some of my shots that I have already submitted for exhibitions and such, but I would hope I'd have the ability to get close to same edits, but it's too many to go through. I'm also going through the entire 2014 collection to cull a bunch of yucky shots that I was thinking of editing but never did, so I want them gone. This year 2015, I'm only importing what I'm interested in editing, but since I do love moving objects, it's hard to flag ahead of time and find it easier to import then dump after choosing my subject.
I hope that clarifies some things. Now, on the external drive is my 2013 folder (my work flow imports from camera to hard drive/my pictures/date folder). I use a PC. When my computer was about to crash, I took LR and copied it over to External. I then copied the master 2014 folder (where it imports) and copied too--I had to work quickly. I probably should have done it through LR, copying the catalogue and the folder, but honestly, I realize that my first error in ever starting LR was not understanding the startup procedures, so I'm going backwards. I may just need to hire someone to come in and give a hands on session to see what can be done. I hate losing my edits for 2014 in particular because I was much more intentional then (one of the goals of 2014--but the computer was wonky, so I did what I could immediately).
I'm sorry I'm not being clear. I'm not clear myself, but you are making very good sense to me. The only place the ? comes up is on the LR catalog on the external, not the hard drive on desktop, so if I lose those, I think I'll live. I've learned that I must always move forward. I'm still experimenting today. I am about to call in an expert I know who teaches LR and does house visits. It may be worth the cost to have everything going well going forward.
I store my photos on a RAIDED 4 TB NAS drive of which I have used 1.09TB which is wired into our home network.
The catalogues take up 7gb on OneDrive............initially we had 'fooled' Lightroom and had set up my catalogues on the NAS but I wanted to be able to take my laptop to my dad's and be able to perform 'admin' on my images eg Keywords.........and I am lead to believe, from what I have read, I am going to be able to do that with my catalogues on OneDrive (which was chosen as the cheapest 'cloud' to purchased additional storage if required.) I have yet to test this theory, as I am not going to dad's until February!!!
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Do you normally use just one catalogue or several? I have 3 and recently moved the catalogue location to OneDrive and reconnected to these from my desktop and laptop without having to re add copy etc. There are some fab videos on YouTube. Will help where I can :)
I dont know about helping with past edits , but I did learn about this little gem for ensuring future edits can be seen by other editing software http://photographyconcentrate.com/lightroom-tip-turn-automatically-write-changes-xmp/
Then load up your new catalog and then import these back in.
The catalog file contains all the information about the changes you made. Without it, you just have the original RAW files. If lightroom has trouble finding the original files (I believe a "!" will appear on the corner of the thumbnail), you can relink it to the new location LR is smart enough to check all files within the folder so you don't have to relink every file separately.
The idea of using cloud storage is interesting. However, my storage needs are huge. I have close to 1.5 TB of images and videos in multiple lightroom catalogs (I divide catalogs up in years).
Plus with OneDrive, doesn't it just mirror what is on your local drive like Google Drive or Dropbox?
Thanks all! I'll try to answer your questions. I know that there are two LR catalogues because I can launch on on the External and one on the Desktop. I have been trying to figure out how to get them all together, but David, I had not thought of creating separate catalogs on multiple drives (I have several). My hard drive has lots of space (along with the other drives). My backups have been on the same drive as the hard drive, but perhaps I should start doing them as a copy on another drive. Makes sense. When I had to deal with the impending crash, I simply moved everything over to the external drive before I had the crash and them I moved them back. I do think moving the lrcat files back into the catalog or reimport? could be one solution to finding the edits. I'm going to review some more of my Kelby book, although he mainly addresses problems surfacefully. And David, I do not have the ! thankfully, but I do have the ? on the external drive's catalogue (my guess is that it may have been also a different transfer I made to external from my lapto and wiped it clean). The good news is that all my computers are like new again, but the transfer back to what I want on the desktop drive is the process I must understand before I do it. I will update after some more research and small trial processes. Oh, and I don't use cloud storage, and I do not have a subscription to LR with PS. I use everything as the downloaded software. David, I like your second comment, so I'll have to process it in my mind. It's amazing I can even have this conversation after two years starting photography. So many thanks!
So before you rebuilt your computer, it sounds like you copy all your files, including your catalog files, from your internal drive to an external drive via windows explorer or finder (mac). And after the rebuild, you copied them back.
So technically, launching the catalog should work. All the metadata including the edits should still exist in the catalog. LR might be confused about the locations of your RAW files if you didn't use the exact same path and volume name of your internal drive. You would get "?" marks on these folders/files.
If the the catalog on the external drive are the copies you made before you rebuild your computer, it will definitely have "?" because in its database, all the images files were located locally on your internal drive and when it tries to look at the internal drive (using the name of the volume and path), it doesn't see anything (as the files are now all on the external drive).
You could be also receiving the "?" on your directories / files from your LR catalog on your internal drive. The LR catalog records the path of where all your images and it is unforgiving when the actual path differs. In the windows world, it may just need to know that it is the "C drive" and the path (i.e. \Users\darylo'Hare\Pictures\Lightroom\2015\2015-01-15) or in the Apple world, it might look like this "MacintoshHD/Users/darylohare/Pictures/Lightroom/2015/2015-01-15). So the exact path name is required or LR gets confuse and gives you a "?".
This is why exporting/importing catalogs is a better way to move files around as the LR catalog will update the file path.
So if you haven't done the transfer back, you could do this... Launch the copy of the backup catalog on the external drive, right-click on the top-level folder and choose “Find Missing Folder…” and then navigate to the location of your photos on the external hard drive. Once al the "?" marks goes away, you can export the catalog including all images (preview files are optional... you can rebuild them again) to the local drive and you should be good to go.
The above workflow will also allow you to create multiple catalogs if required. If you don't have a lot of images, one catalog may be the easiest to manage. However, if you have a lot of images and/or various projects (i.e. paying jobs vs non_paying jobs), separating them into catalogs might help with the organization. Keywords and collections are a way to do it within LR but as the database gets large, importing catalogs take more time as it has to go through a larger database to find duplicates.
I hope that helps....
I hope that clarifies some things. Now, on the external drive is my 2013 folder (my work flow imports from camera to hard drive/my pictures/date folder). I use a PC. When my computer was about to crash, I took LR and copied it over to External. I then copied the master 2014 folder (where it imports) and copied too--I had to work quickly. I probably should have done it through LR, copying the catalogue and the folder, but honestly, I realize that my first error in ever starting LR was not understanding the startup procedures, so I'm going backwards. I may just need to hire someone to come in and give a hands on session to see what can be done. I hate losing my edits for 2014 in particular because I was much more intentional then (one of the goals of 2014--but the computer was wonky, so I did what I could immediately).
I'm sorry I'm not being clear. I'm not clear myself, but you are making very good sense to me. The only place the ? comes up is on the LR catalog on the external, not the hard drive on desktop, so if I lose those, I think I'll live. I've learned that I must always move forward. I'm still experimenting today. I am about to call in an expert I know who teaches LR and does house visits. It may be worth the cost to have everything going well going forward.
Hi David
I store my photos on a RAIDED 4 TB NAS drive of which I have used 1.09TB which is wired into our home network.
The catalogues take up 7gb on OneDrive............initially we had 'fooled' Lightroom and had set up my catalogues on the NAS but I wanted to be able to take my laptop to my dad's and be able to perform 'admin' on my images eg Keywords.........and I am lead to believe, from what I have read, I am going to be able to do that with my catalogues on OneDrive (which was chosen as the cheapest 'cloud' to purchased additional storage if required.) I have yet to test this theory, as I am not going to dad's until February!!!